


i can almost put it back together

by negativecosine



Series: i can keep rhythm with no metronome [3]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Dysphoria, Infidelity, M/M, Nooks, Quadrant Confusion, Species Swap, sort of mostly pale infidelity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-26
Updated: 2013-05-26
Packaged: 2017-12-13 00:37:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/817901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/negativecosine/pseuds/negativecosine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Karkat deals with his weird human body. Dave totally fails to deal with his weird troll body, so Karkat does it for him.</p>
<p>(Features some really scandalous conciliatory exhibitionism and infidelity, some really messed up quadrants, and some slightly wrong-headed species essentialism. )</p>
            </blockquote>





	i can almost put it back together

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to manyblinkinglights, abscontrix, and irrumatrix (I sense a theme, here...) for looking this over. 
> 
> This is much more up-front than the other parts about bad body feelings that Karkat has. If you were basically okay with Karkat's bad body feelings in the prequels, it's more of the same, but if it was a little uncomfortable for you, this probably isn't your cup of tea.

"Okay so," says Dave, and your whole brain and indeed the very fiber of your being goes "no, fuck no," before you actually say it aloud. 

"No, fuck no." 

"You don't even know what I was going to-"

"I don't want to fucking talk about it." 

He shuts up. You allow yourself an inch of relief to relax, just for a second. Only now he's just kind of staring at you. Probably. He put the shades back on while he was off in the ablution trap, and even with just a towel and sunglasses, he looks way more dressed than you feel in your clean jeans and two extra layers of sweater. He keeps staring at you while you fidget with the over-long sleeves, and you keep crossing and uncrossing your legs because nothing feels comfortable in this body, nothing feels _right_. 

"Kay," he says finally. He gets up, all his lanky limbs and spine rolling up, and you hate him because he carries himself so fucking easily, moves like any good troll fighter you've seen, you hate him because this is clearly just fine for him. He knows how to work a body like this. He knows how to deal when he doesn't. 

Asshole. 

You don't say anything as he leaves, just keep your eyes locked on him 'til the door slides shut. He doesn't look back. 

You sit still for a very long time after that- sit in your discomfort, and force yourself not to fidget, just to get some practice in before you have to face anyone else. It's extremely difficult, and you have to put a lot of effort into controlling your breathing, forcing your mind blank. You lie back onto the awful stained respiteplatform and scrunch all your limbs up really close, like a shelled insect on its back, and try to bundle yourself in to keep from moving. 

You sleep, for a while, and don't dream. Not really. An empty bubble, maybe, or maybe you're asleep inside the bubble, too. Who knows. Who cares. 

The light hasn't changed when you wake, but you're sore enough that you know it's been at least a few hours. The noise that woke you is, of course, fucking Strider, who has apparently decided that a bit of really messed up species-disabled pail-failure is the same thing as permission to invade your block whenever he fucking feels like it. 

You tell him all this. 

"You haven't eaten," he tells you, and shows you a plate of some thoroughly unappetizing mush that he's brought. 

"You're not my lusus," you tell him, or something along these lines. You're kind of trying not to hear your own voice; it sounds wrong. 

"Good job, I'm not anyone's giant monster mom, yes, you are still not going to starve yourself alone in a dark room like a gross weirdo. Get up, I'm not feeding you." 

True to his word, he leaves the sustenancereceptacle and leaves. You don't watch him go this time. 

You do manage a few bites. You even keep most of it down. 

Another few hours of staring blankly at things, and you feel pretty much ready to get it over with. Despite the two sweaters you're already wearing, it takes another oversized hoodie pulled down low over your hornless, useless pan, before you feel safe enough to go out. Your whole body still feels exposed, vulnerable, weak. You can't see well in the dim light in most of the hallways, you can't smell the mildew or stale body odour or pheromones or greasepaint or perfume or any of the dozen smells that normally help you navigate this labyrinthine shithole of awful teenagers. When you finally run across a source of light, you're almost grateful for a moment- then you recognize that ghost-white glow, and, fuck, there is nowhere to abscond to, you can't avoid them. Kanaya and Rose look curiously at you, and you just fucking know they've been talking about you, and of course you couldn't hear it, because in addition to being near-blind and near-smell-blind (whatever), you're basically deaf. You hate human everythings. 

"Dave told us that you were-" Rose started. You cut her off. 

"If that FUCKING ASSHOLE TOLD Y-" 

"-that you were cute, but I didn't believe him," she finishes firmly. Kanaya is luminescing like a horrible conspirator in horrible cahoots and basically everyone here makes you want to die forever. 

"His taste is somewhat. Questionable. At times," offers Kanaya. 

"OH WELL GEE THANKS A LOT BUT-" 

"-but I can see he's developing a more refined palette." 

"WOW." 

"Sorry," says Kanaya, and at least she has the decency to flush a little green. Rose looks smug and unrepentant and so much like Strider that you want to hit her in the mouth. Or not. Kind of. 

"I CAN'T TELL IF YOU'RE HITTING ON ME OR INSULTING ME." Your voice is stuck in whiny capslock, now, you can't shut it off, and you can't stand the sound of yourself, you sound so _awful_. 

"Shoosh," says Rose, like a horrible Strideresque asshole, and paps you right on the fucking face. Right in front of her matesprit. What. She immediately looks back to Kanaya, smirking. "There, was that right?" 

Kanaya is so green and shining so bright, she looks a little like a glow-grub, the kind you used to collect in jars. "A little obscene, but generally correct." 

"OH MY GOD," you tell them. Is the rest of your life just going to be standing around defenselessly while the universe throws buckets at your face? Possibly yes. "OH MY GOD," you say again, for emphasis, and then you abFUCKINGscond, even though you have to squeeze past them and oh god even the slightest brush through all these layers of clothes reminds you how awful you are, and you are gone, fucking gone, faster than you thought your stupid human legs could carry you. 

You find yourself, of FUCKING COURSE, in Strider's block. He's dragged your old recuperacoon in here and it clashes with everything and you want so badly to just crawl in there and let it knock you out, but you know from careful experimentation that skin contact is enough to get human chemistry really, really fucked up. Everything gets significantly more awful when Dave wanders back in, for some reason back in a towel. How many times does he need to get naked and fondle himself in one day? You hate him so much. You take his towel off him, because this is how much you hate him. 

He doesn't... flinch, doesn't anything. He does react a little, his face does something that you can't read, and you don't like looking at his face like this because you have to look _up_ , and you hate that. You stare at his thorax, instead, and his leg-joints and his. His skin. You're both totally erased of scars, and that's sort of... fine, but freaky, and you saw him before, he was all lined with them like any respectable bladekind holder would be, and seeing him look all scrubbed smooth and gray and velvety is so weird. 

"You too," he says, and he's so weirdly fucking quiet, you notice, since you- since that. And he just sits, right there on the floor, nude and lanky and hulking. He still looks _dangerous_ , in a way that makes you all hungry and mad. 

"Hell no," you tell him, and thank fuck you are capable of Indoor Voices again, because if you had to hear yourself screeching you'd just beg him to rip your throat out. But you sit across from him, on the floor, so that your knees sort of touch him. 

"What's this," he says, without any preamble, and he's spreading his oh fuck. Oh hell oh fuck. "You told me earlier, right, I wasn't listening at all, because you were touching it, is this just like a normal human one or what." 

He is just sitting there spreading his nook with two fingers and you can see where he's still all swollen and a little slick. His claws dent the plump flesh a little and you wonder what he's tried, if he's figured out that there's no way in hell he's getting them in there. You wonder if he'd even want to. 

"Fuck," you say, and lean forward despite yourself. "That's. A nook." 

"So when you call people nooksniffers-"

"That's a nook," you say firmly. 

His face does something again. "That's nasty." He sounds weirdly excited about that. "You're picturing everyone's noses up in nooks all the time, aren't you?" 

"No, fuck you, it's just a figure of speech. That's your bulge," you tell him, because, that sure is his bulge right there. Why is he turned on. Is he turned on by the sound of his voice? That would explain... so many things. 

"Tentacledick." 

"What's a dick?" 

" _Your_ bulge," he says, prodding at your ankle with his foot. You scoot away from him, but don't get up. His body is... it's comforting to look at. It looks really normal, despite the no-scar thing. It doesn't look like a gross weird alien, like yours, so you like looking at his flat thorax, his long, meaty legs. His horns. His teeth. 

Your bulge is doing something again. Damn it. Watching his- it's not all the way out, hardly even the tip, he's got to be fucking exhausted, especially if he keeps playing with it. 

Okay, and now you're thinking about him playing with it. Fine. Whatever. 

"Hey," he says. You ignore him. Or, no, you don't, you ignore the awful annoying douchebag part of him, and focus on the way the inside of his mouth looks wet and fierce when he talks. "Earth to Colonel Vantas, have you secured orbit around Stop Staring At My Junk Looking Wistful Planet, you have the green light to launch a full assault." 

You only do it to shut him up. It's really fucking effective, like his mouth and his nook are connected and he can only work one at the time. He's hotter than you, now, and your fingers feel so weird and sensitive and the texture's really getting to you. You just cup it, fingers flat and pushed together, like you did when your claws were long and you couldn't deal with it, and, it was so annoying but now you'd give anything to be able to do that again, to just shut yourself up with some well-placed pressure. 

"You said," and god, you can't even force yourself to say it. "You said your nook was like a human one. Humans obviously do not have them. Unless I'm a deficient human, wouldn't that be fucking perfect." 

"Shut up," he says, and wraps his hand around your wrist where you're still touching him. He doesn't move your hand. 

You want badly to not shut up, you want to drown him with noise, but then you'd have to hear yourself more, too. You can smell him, this close, your weak pathetic human nub can't miss this, he smells bright and sharp and clean and right. You can feel his pulse under his skin, and he's got to be almost dry, probably can't pail for another few days at least, but fuck if you don't want to try. "Move," you tell him. "It'll feel-" 

He doesn't wait for you to tell him what it'll feel like. He holds your hand in place and grinds up against it, and hisses out a breath through his teeth that you're sure was supposed to be a real sound. You hate him for holding back, how fucking dare he- but he humps your hand again, slow and with purpose, and your fingers are _so_ sensitive, and this time when he looks up, it's you that makes a noise. His bulge is sliding out slow, and his whole abdomen's all tense like it's taking enormous effort to let it happen. 

"How many times did you self-pail," you hear yourself ask. You don't want to know, really, but. 

"Twice," he says, and his voice is all jagged with mating frequencies and you know you can't even hear the lower ranges with these ears but it still does stuff to you. You shift, but don't uncross your legs. "I'm gonna die if I try it again, right? Murderbots gonna come out of the sky and end me for capital self-abuse crimes." 

"You probably can't go again," you tell him. You curl your fingers a little, right over his nook, so the tip of one drags in, then out again. He groans. 

"Seriously?" 

"You're going to get really close. And then there's going to be nothing there to push it out." He's panting, fuck, he must be hypersensitive like this, and his chest is blood-flushed and every single line of muscle from shoulders to thighs stands out perfectly. 

"Why the fuck are you-" he cuts himself off with a strained breath, and you can see his eyes squeezed tight shut through his fucking shades. (You like it better when he doesn't look at you anyways. You briefly entertain a vivid fantasy of blinding him before fucking him.) "-doing this, if I can't even, fuck. If I can't finish?" 

You consider this, and dip your middle finger into his nook again. It grasps around you hungrily, and for a second the wires cross in your brain and it feels like he's squeezing and fluttering around your bulge, your real one, you can feel its ghost squirming in your pants, _fuck_. "Because I hate you," you finally say, very quiet, and hope he doesn't really hear you. It doesn't fully matter, because you slip a second finger into him, then, and though you've barely got the tips inside him, he clamps down and throws his head back, gripping your wrist so hard you know he's drawn blood. He comes dry, shaking and wheezing and weak, and when he remembers himself enough to pry his hand off yours, there's a hunger in his eyes that strikes you cold. 

"Not enough," he says, _growls_ , mean and starved-looking. "Give me-" 

"Hands back," you tell him, mostly because you have no idea where major blood vessels in your fragile arms are- while you wouldn't mind dying mid-pailing, you are pretty sure he'd object if you bled out all over him before you got him off. Nevermind that you _can't_ get him off, the stupid fuck, and he's just going to get more and more jacked up until he... what, you don't know, you've never tried. Maybe you're a little curious. He tucks his hands back under his horns, anyways, and for a second you want to grab them and yank his head down to make him learn about your nook _properly_ \- 

You can't do that, obviously, so you put your two fingers back into him, and curl them. His spine curls with them, and his horns clack against the ground. It sounds painful as hell, and it makes him keen and clench down around you, which, yes, good. Again, you don't move your hand, just hold it there- it's enough, he bears down and fucks himself on it, and it's ungodly hot, and why are your fingers so sensitive, _why_ , he may as well have wrapped his sticky nook around your old bulge. 

When he arches again, it's noiselessly, and he clenches down around you so tight, and there are these little ripples inside him, like he's going to pull you in fingers first, and it takes him a long time to unwind, this time, gasping and frozen until he finally relaxes. 

"I'm going to die," he says. "I'm dead." You look up where his face is tilted away from you, and there are red tracks out the corners of his eyes where you can see up under the shades. His breathing is shaky, and his nook twitches around your fingers, where you have left them. 

"One more," you say, very quietly, and you are surprised at the rough edge in your voice. You are, for a moment, breathtakingly envious of him- he has what you have always fucking needed, and will definitely never get, and your whole body throbs with the pain of that realization. 

"Why not." He affects a dry laugh, and it sounds exactly like a dry sob. You want keenly to be fully inside his body, to know what this feels like, and you hate him so desperately. "Not like you can kill me any more." 

You shove your other two fingers in harshly, and he doesn't make a damn sound. You glare up at his silence, and find his eyes wide, staring sightless at the ceiling. His thighs are spread and trembling and his mouth is open and drooling and he is completely frozen, this time, when you curl your fingers and draw at the inside of him, and try to show him how, exactly, you would fuck his hot nook if you were equipped. It takes a minute for him to choke and start breathing again, presumably simply because he got past the end of his oxygen and couldn't fucking deal, and every inhale after that is a wet, dizzy sob. He doesn't move at all, this time, his thighs stay parted and his spine is held in that perfect arch throughout, most of his back completely off the floor, so that half his weight is resting on his horns and his hands, which are both pressed into the ground above his head. The only way you can tell he's done is when the nook muscles clamp down so hard your fingerbones hurt, then go completely slack, all at once. The rest of him follows pretty quick, and he makes a nasty broken noise when you pull your hand out of him. 

Your legs have gone all tingly and weird when you unfold, and kneel up over him to look down at his face. He's still hitching little sobs, and his teeth are bared in an involuntary snarl, and he looks so ugly and fucked up that a surge of something nasty swells through you, and you lunge up and bite as his lip until he stops crying and kisses you back properly, and you don't let up when you taste that awful metal human blood taste. He can't get away, can't pull back with his horns still firm against the floor, but when he runs out of air and energy he lets his jaw hang down a little, gives up kissing back. You cut yourself on his teeth one more time, mostly on purpose, before you sit up and take in the wreck of him fully. 

"You're helping me up," he says, and his voice is tight and small and you hate it like that. "You're putting me to slime-bed. And you're not touching me until I can generate enough fuckjuice to get back at you." 

That... that's fine. It takes a lot of work to haul him up, but you're both wordless and exhausted and he's so limp and pliant that there's not much you need to do except get him up and dump him down again. You wipe your hand on his discarded towel and leave it on the floor, then go to wander. 

 

This time, you let yourself be found. Whatever. You go find the Mayor, and silently rearrange cans with him until Terezi hunts you down. You're still bundled in all your sweaters, but you know full well you reek of nook and shame. She politely doesn't mention it, just settles down next to you and studiously undoes all your fastidious architectural achievements. 

"Do you want my advice," she says finally. 

"I deeply do not." You don't look at her. 

"You need a moirail." 

That gets you to look at her. You can't see her properly, she's half-turned away from you, and in her now-ordinary state of general dishevelment, but you can see the line of her mouth all flat and somber. It's deeply off-putting. "I _have_ a moirail." 

"No," she says, "you really don't," and to your great fucking dismay levers herself up the floor and makes to leave, already. Fuck. Less than two minutes and she's sick of you, awesome, good job, everyone finds you vomitous and you want to die again. She doesn't look back when she goes, but pauses at the door with her back turned, like she wants to add something. Like she wants you to say something. 

You let her go, and thank the Mayor for his time. What a hospitable guy. You'll really miss the Mayor when your bile finally consumes you and dissolves you down into amorphous goo. 

You consider the possibility that you are maybe wallowing in it a little. 

You go to find Rose. 

Rose is with Kanaya, obviously. She's still sort of off-puttingly smirky, and her cheeks are round and pretty in a way you kind of resent. You're pretty clearly interrupting something- there's a smear of green on the corner of Rose's mouth, and Kanaya looks so _hungry_ , and basically if you weren't an inch away from going and braining yourself with juggling clubs, you'd take one look at this and run like hell. But instead you silently go and sit right in between them, and fold your hands, tucked inside your sleeves, over your chest and just sort of wait for one of them to tell you to get the hell out. 

They don't. Rose paps your cheek again, which feels off-puttingly nice, and leaves her hand there. Her skin is cool and dry, and you don't look at either of them. 

"We Can Try And Reverse It," Kanaya says, while Rose rubs her thumb across your cheekbone. Her voice sounds a little tight and flustered, and if you were in any kind of normal state you'd be feeling similar. You don't know what you're asking, or who you're asking it from, but you know that whatever you get out of this is going to be basically fucking obscene. 

"Tried," you manage to say, and your eyes feel traitorously wet. "Yesterday." 

"We can try and do a second... experiment," Rose says on your other side, and when you turn to look at Rose, you can feel Kanaya's hand on your knee. 

"It Would Be Risky," Kanaya puts in, squeezing your knee a bit. Rose is still stroking you, and through your weird, tight ball of discomfort, you feel a little lighter. 

"I don't care," you say. "I can't-" god, fuck your awful vocal chords, your voice keeps breaking pathetically, "I can't stay like this." 

"No," says Rose firmly, and you can feel Kanaya look up at her sharply, at the same time you do. "We can't afford to lose you. That's how this works, right?" A hard, determined look about her face fades momentarily, and she looks lost and questioning. "We stop him from doing something stupid. Isn't that important?" 

You're sure Kanaya's blushing as furiously as you are, but you don't dare look back at her. You put your hand, still in your sleeve, over hers. "One Would," she says, "Calm One's. One's Moirail Down, Prevent Him From Doing Any Undue Harm To Others." 

"Him dying would cause us undue harm," Rose says, and you can't look at her right now, you just can't look at either of them. You let your head drop to Rose's chest and her godtier robe thing is soft and it soaks up your tears when you let them out silently. They let you stay like that until you doze off, though it's probably uncomfortable for all three of you. You're just so, so tired, and you can't deal, and Rose is warm against your face and Kanaya is cool against your back and that's all you need right now. 

You don't know how long it is before you wake, but it can't be long, because there are two little wet spots on Rose's shirt where your eyes were. You don't move your head, because what woke you is, apparently, Rose having a whispered argument with someone. 

"I don't know why you can't be a little more open-minded-" she's hissing, and her arm tightens around your shoulders, though you don't recall exactly when she put it there, or where Kanaya's gone, or, wow, anything. 

"Oh, like you've been?" someone whisper-shouts back, and oh, that is Dave. Dave is angry. How is he even conscious? You squeeze your eyes shut and press a little closer to Rose. "I'm not _comfortable_ with it, it is all _weird_ codependent bullshit, which, right, obviously you'd be well versed in, wouldn't you?" 

"Are we bringing parental figures into this, is that what we're doing?" You've never heard Rose sound this cold before. Fuck. "I suppose it wouldn't be a stretch to say that yours is learned behavior, too, complete dependence on one person without any kind of social support network or communication-" 

"Shut up," Dave says, and he's not whispering anymore, and he still sounds wrecked. Fuck, you wonder if he thought to drink any water, asshole's probably dehydrated, and wow you wish you didn't care. "Shut up, that's not what we're doing, it's just. Come on, seriously? You know how I've been- and then he just face-dives into your tits and then I'm supposed to be okay with that? And what about your girlfriend-" 

"She suggested it," Rose snaps, and you're certain she knows your awake now, but you trust her not to rat you out. You feel like the worst piece of shit, but you'll take shelter where it's offered. "She knows what he needs, this is part of how they cope." 

"Yeah, well he's _human_ now, he'd better get fucking used to-" 

Dave cuts off, because they definitely both hear you sob, just once, at full-volume into Rose's chest. 

"Get out," Rose says, and her arms are like iron around you, fuck. You wriggle half-heartedly, but you're too weak to get anywhere, and she knows it. " _Go_." 

No one speaks for a minute, and then you assume he's gone, because her grip on you loosens and she cups your face, brings it up to look at you. 

"I can't," you say. You're crying again, full-on, and you hate it and you want to stop, god, she can see you and you hate it so much. "I can't, I'm not, I can't do that, you have to tell him." 

"Wrong quadrant," she says, and oh god you're not even a little bit pale for Rose Lalonde, there is nothing to pity in any inch of her, and you need her so much that you cannot tell her that. "Shush," she says quickly, reading something off you. "I don't need you to reciprocate. This is because I like you and I can't allow you to self-destruct, okay? I do not need any promises from you. If I am cheating on anyone-" You make to interrupt her, but she shushes you physically, a hand on your mouth, "If I am cheating on anyone, it's probably Dave, but he doesn't do quadrants, because he is _not a troll_ , and you _are_ , okay?" 

"I'm not," you say, muffled into her hand. It comes out sort of as "Fnhah." 

"You are."

"I'm not." 

"Yes." 

"No." 

"Yes." 

"Oh fuck Nepeta and Equius used to do this in public, it's intolerable-" And there you go, you are laughing now, and at some point you crawled fully onto her lap and she's still pretty wrapped up around you, with both hands on your face and you are hit with an enormous wave of how much you fucking miss your friends, your weird awful nerdy awkward friends, and then you are hit with the obvious follow-up guilt and that chokes your laugh down, and now you can't really cry anymore, either, because you are definitely cheating on someone, too, someone who could easily be watching you do it. Why is everything you do terrible? 

"You're trying to punish yourself for something again," Rose says presently, and paps you a little more forcefully. "Stop. This is the nasty desperate one-night-stand of the pale quadrant, and you need to be at peace with every bit of trashy cliche that entails. Kanaya has lent me the novels." 

"How many novels?" 

"All the novels." 

You don't... really have anything to say to that. 

"You need to go find him," she says eventually, sighing slightly. She pets your hair a little, and you don't really want to like that as much as you do. 

"He is going to be a raging douche about everything forever." 

"He will be much worse if you don't go and explain it to him." You sigh a lot less lightly than she did, and put your forehead on her shoulder. 

"Can we do this again?" you ask. 

"If you need it." 

"What about if you do?" 

She tilts your face back up to look at you proper. 

"You are very sweet," she says, and kisses you on the cheek. You want to pity her so badly, but you simply can't. "Go." 

You go, squeaking a little when she pats your ass on your way out. 

You don't run into anyone on the way back to Dave's block, which strikes you as both fucking typical and a little ominous. True, you haven't eaten in about a night and a half, and probably everyone else who's not a horrible freak is taking care of basic bodily needs like functional, normal fucking people, but it's still weirdly quiet on the short walk back across from Rose's to Dave's. 

Dave is, thank fuck, actually fully clothed when you find him. It is a goddamn miracle. 

He flinches a little when you let the light in from the hall. He's doing something on his grubtop, and has his shades folded and hanging off the curled tip of one horn, and looks _fucking ridiculous_. 

"You look fucking ridiculous," you tell him, because someone needs to. 

"Shut the door," he says, in a really piss-poor attempt at his old monotone. His voice is just... so much _better_ in a troll's range, even if it drives you crazy that you can't hear half the frequencies. 

He slides his shades on and snaps the grubtop closed before you manage to turn and get another good look. 

"So," he says. 

"I'm not your human wife," you say bluntly. It catches him a little by surprise- you can see he had something ready, and now doesn't, and that's a little satisfying. "I'm not your human anything, if you try any of this bullshit semantics with me I swear I will walk off the fucking meteor and leave you all to rot." 

"I'm not your kismetfish," he says, oddly soft. He butchers the word on purpose now, has for months.

"Of course you're fucking not," you snap, even though it hurts. "You're not a _troll_ , dumbass." He flicks a finger at his horns, as if that's a fucking answer. You're having none of it- you get in his space, crowd him up into his chair. "No, you're _not_ , you didn't grow up like one of us, you don't want to learn, you don't want to do it our way, you're just enjoying having a fresh new nook and some scary claws to play with. _Fuck_ you," you say, surprised at the depth of fucking anger your soft little body can hold. "You're pretending you're into it because you're getting your bulge grabbed, but this _isn't_ what you are and you do NOT get to tell me WHAT I AM," oh fuck, you are doing the shouty thing again, "AND WHAT I AM IS MORE OF A FUCKING TROLL THAN YOU WILL EVER BE, HORNS OR BULGE OR WHATEVER YOU'VE GOT-" 

"I KNOW," he shouts over you, and, wow, that shuts you up quick. He doesn't keep shouting, which is unfortunate because you could _really_ go for a good excuse to get into a really stupid one-sided fight right now. "I know I'm not, and I don't like all the shit you people think you're supposed to do, it's all fucked-up murders and incestuous slurries and being friends with people who've killed all your other friends, and fucking around with each others' feelings which is idiotic considering the murder thing-" 

"Shut up." You climb up him, just, grab him by one horn and one shoulder and climb right up so you're kneeling over his lap. "Shut up, you're being stupid and you're upset and it's gross and I don't care. Go talk to Lalonde about it, she's so pale for you I propel myself into orbit with the bile I want to vomit." 

"Projecting much," he says, and he's just sort of... letting you sit there. It's weird. Maybe not bad weird. 

"Shut the fuck up," you repeat. "You think I'd go asking for that if I was anything less than fucking desperate? You think I have _anything_ to offer her? No, fuck you, you don't know who you're jealous of and I refuse to care. Figure it out yourself, or get your head far enough out your wastechute you can ask someone else to do it for you." 

"You were just like this. On her." He cops an inelegant feel of your inelegant ass, and it takes everything you have not to squirm and bolt away. 

"So?" 

"So how-" He breathes through his nose, frowning, sorting something out. "So how do I know if you like me or her." 

It is actually literally breathtaking how stupid he is. You actually literally gasp aloud, at what a fucking asshole you are sitting on. You drop all your weight down on his thighs, get your other hand on his other horn, and yank him forward to put his face right on your face. "Tell me," you say, really quiet and harsh, "Can you picture me with half my hand in Rose's nook? Is that what you thought of, when I was in yours? Were you thinking about my mouth on her bulge, or hers on mine? Is _that_ it, Strider?" 

He breathes out again, tense and agitated. "No, I-" 

You don't let him finish. You yank his head to one side- he was lying, earlier, they make fantastic handlebars- and growl, as best you can, right in his ear. "Get your shit together," you tell him, "Then come find me." 

You don't look back when you leave.


End file.
